I think that the most useful part of this class was that it offered a more practical course as compared to the majority of courses that are strictly academic. I think that it is important to have practical courses because they are helpful for preparing students to work in industry after they graduate which academic courses don’t really touch…[Read more]

Depending on the project, I think that it is possible to focus on more than one priority. It would be important to rank each priority of the project – low, medium, high so that the highest priority priorities are given the most attention. These high priority items are the ones that will likely have the biggest impact if the project is successful…[Read more]

I think that this course was very useful and provided a lot of useful information for anyone who plans to work in the medical device industry in the future or even people who are currently working in industry especially as a project manager. I think that this course gave a very good overview of how to manage a medical device project and all…[Read more]

Retaining key employees is an important consideration for a company to be successful. Retaining these key employees also retains all of the knowledge that person has from working on past company projects which is a useful asset that a new hire can’t offer. Retention of resources is also important because they have already been trained for the…[Read more]

I stay motivated by setting and reaching goals. Short term and long term goals are a good way to stay motivated for the long haul. Setting a short term goal and achieving it requires someone to stay on track and make day to day decisions that keep them on track to reach their goals. This includes small decisions and large decisions that come up…[Read more]

I think that there are many reasons someone may leave a certain job including finding a better opportunity elsewhere, being frustrated with their current work assignments, or issues with people in the organization. Someone may leave a job because the have the opportunity for advancement by taking a job at a different company or they want to try a…[Read more]

Communication management is very important in the success of a project and an organization, making the communications management plan a very important document. The communications management plan sets up important things such as how often communication will occur. This is an important consideration because it allows the project to stay on track…[Read more]

I think that reducing turnover and retaining top employees are important considerations for an organization especially in the medical device industry when it comes to human resource management. Retaining key employees over the long term can be very beneficial because those employees have been sufficiently trained and demonstrated the necessary…[Read more]

Accurately breaking down the work breakdown structure is a very important aspect for a successful project, because it breaks down and organizes each task of the project. If the WBS is not well constructed it can cause project delays, missed milestones, overestimating or underestimating the budget based on the WBS. Some ways that a WBS can be…[Read more]

All five of these factors are critical for the project to be successful, but I think that the most important out of those is effective communication. Effective communication between all parties working on the project is required for all of the other factors for success to also work successfully.

The different kinds of changes made during the monitoring and controlling phase include non essential design changes, design change numbers, and engineering change order.
Non essential design changes involve a change to the design control document while the product is still in the design controls. Design change numbers are a major change to the…[Read more]

During the closing phase of the monitoring and controlling phase some of the important processes include: closing out contracts, paying all people who need to be paid, giving final performance reviews, keep track of what you learned during the project, and handing the project off. During the closing phase it is also important to generate the…[Read more]

Metrics offer a way to quantitatively describe the project as it moves along. Metrics can be used to evaluate the success of the project and also compare the project to the original estimates made for the project. Management can use metrics to determine whether a project is worth continuing or not.

The schedule variance could be affected by many factors such as how accurate the project manager was when first establishing the schedule. It is possible that the project manager overestimates the amount of time different aspects of the project will take; in this case the team will likely be ahead of schedule and the schedule variance will be…[Read more]

I don’t think there are many cases where it would be acceptable to increase project risk to shorten the time duration of the project. Depending on the project adding more risk to an already moderate to high risk device could be the tipping point for the harsh consequences of a risk potentially going wrong. Adding the extra risk just to shorten…[Read more]

One way to prevent scope creep is to have regularly scheduled check-ins with all team members to make sure that they are all working on things that are in-scope for the project. This could be a quick web meeting, over the phone, or in person but it would help ensure that the team is staying within the scope of the project and things that are out…[Read more]

I think that the criticality of the part being outsourced would have a great impact on the degree of background work that is done on a potential vendor. For example a low criticality part may not require as much research into the vendor company as a medium or high criticality product. For a high criticality part, a project manager likely needs…[Read more]

The best way to deal with a project team member like Patty, is to get her to understand why things need to be changed and communicate to her the importance. In this simulation, we had the choice of scheduling a meeting between Patty and the research team member who was doing the study which I thought was the best way to proceed. By scheduling a…[Read more]

When working on my senior design project during my undergrad there were several times where we missed a milestone. The way we approached this was to continue working on the milestone as we progressed with other tasks on our schedule. We were fortunate that we were able to do this because we had enough time built into our schedule that we were…[Read more]

I think the best way to meet deadlines in this scenario is to give the planning phase of the project proper consideration and devoting as much time to research as possible. The more research that can be done, the more likely it is that the team is able to eliminate options that ultimately don’t make it past testing during the research phase before…[Read more]